April 11 (Bloomberg) -- Paul Ryan is John McCain, circa
2000, or Barack Obama in the last presidential election or Bob
Strauss and Jim Baker for their entire careers: the darling of
the Washington commentariat.

The chairman of the House Budget Committee, who released a
budget last week that calls for dramatic spending cutbacks to
politically sensitive programs such as Medicare, has been called
a “rebel with a cause” by the television anchorwoman Diane
Sawyer; to New York Times columnist David Brooks, he’s a
“powerful elected official,” who is “willing to take a stand,
willing to face the political perils.” A news search for the
past three months shows the terms “courage” or “courageous”
or “bold” were used 679 times in articles mentioning Ryan.

Whether the Wisconsin Republican emerges as one of the most
influential national politicians of his generation -- the
columnist-commentator George Will already has anointed him as
the next vice president -- or whether this is merely his 15-minute Andy Warhol-like flash of fame, will rest on the
political and policy credibility of his agenda, and whether he
can expand his reach beyond fiscal issues.

There is no more attractive Republican on the national
scene. The 41-year-old Ryan is articulate, personable,
intelligent, deeply versed in policy, and conveys sincerity with
few of the sharp edges and none of the harshness that mark some
contemporary conservative politicians.

Voted for TARP

Neither is he an ideologue. A principled conservative, he
nevertheless voted for the federal bailout for Wall Street banks,
the No Child Left Behind education measure, the prescription-drug benefit for seniors and for a bill that bans employment
discrimination based on sexual orientation.

He once worked for Jack Kemp, and describes himself as a
disciple of the tax-cutting, minority-courting, buoyant late
former congressman and vice presidential candidate. Yet while he
has embraced Kemp’s tax cutting, he has displayed little of the
outreach and racial inclusiveness of his mentor.

“There’s no comparison between Jack Kemp and Paul Ryan,”
says Hilary Shelton, senior vice president for advocacy of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
“Jack was a friend and always accessible. We have little or no
relationship with Ryan.”

There are many missing specifics from Ryan’s budget and the
early fire has been more than partisan demagoguery. Alice Rivlin,
the Democratic economist who co-wrote an earlier Medicare-overhaul plan with Ryan, opposes his current proposal as
draconian.

Privatizing Medicare

The Congressional Budget Office suggests that eventually
privatizing Medicare as Ryan’s plan advocates, with government
“premium support” payments to insurance companies, will result
in less coverage and higher costs for senior citizens. Many
experts said his proposal to turn Medicaid, the health insurance
plan for poor people, into a block grant to states will reduce
benefits for the most vulnerable members of society.

In disputing those assertions, Ryan will have to
demonstrate he isn’t curbing federal spending on the backs of
the poor, elderly and disabled. Almost one-sixth of Medicaid
beneficiaries are people with disabilities. Because they have
greater health-care needs, they account for almost half of all
expenditures.

Ryan is on the high ground when he talks about the need to
rein in chronic deficits and the growth in entitlement spending.
He loses that advantage if voters believe he’s advocating a
massive transfer of wealth from lower and middle-income
Americans to the most affluent and asking almost no shared
sacrifice.

Estate-Tax Cut

When he takes any tax increases off the table, and
passionately defends measures like a more generous estate tax,
which benefits the richest Americans, it makes that challenge
difficult. His own long-term budget proposal calls for lowering
the top tax rate to 25 percent for both corporations and
individuals; corporations now are subject to a 35 percent top
rate, for individuals it is 35 percent, slated to go up to 39.6
percent.

The Wisconsin lawmaker says he would offset the
dramatically lower rates he proposes -- the lowest for upper-income individuals since 1931 and for corporations since 1941 --
by broadening the base and eliminating tax loopholes.

Lost Revenue

Here’s where the politics and the math get complicated. His
rate cuts would mean $3 trillion or more in lost revenue over a
decade. The only way to make up that shortfall would be to enact
measures such as eliminating the write-off for interest on home
mortgages, the deductions for state and local income taxes and
for charitable contributions, or the research credit for
businesses.

That wouldn’t sit well with middle-income voters or some in
the business community.

Interestingly, the punditocracy, which hails Ryan for his
political courage, often fails to note he was a member of the
bipartisan commission led by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles
that recommended a comparable debt-reduction plan by both
cutting back on spending and increasing taxes. Ryan was in the
minority on the panel that voted against it, in contrast to
Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, a conservative Republican who
swallowed his reservations about higher taxes, and Senator Dick
Durbin of Illinois, a liberal Democrat who overcame his
hesitancies about curbing Medicare and Social Security outlays.

Tax Increases

Every serious bipartisan proposal to tackle the long-term
budget deficit -- Bowles-Simpson, the commission led by Rivlin
and former Republican Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico, the
National Academy of Sciences -- calls for a combination of
cutbacks in the growth of entitlement spending, curbing
discretionary spending, including defense, and some tax
increases.

Bill Galston, a scholar at the Washington-based Brookings
Institution and former domestic-policy adviser to President Bill
Clinton who has offered another proposal, notes that while
Ryan’s plan “stands no chance of enactment,” it could be
important in “jumpstarting the ‘adult conversation,’ which
Obama and others have said is necessary.”

If a serious down-payment on long-term deficit reduction is
enacted this year, it will have to be bipartisan and include
cutbacks in entitlements and higher taxes; the real road map
will be Bowles-Simpson. An important determinant of whether
that’s possible will be the flexibility of the bright young
congressman who is chairman of the House Budget Committee.

(Albert R. Hunt is the executive editor for Washington at
Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)